Israeli military admits to illegally harvesting the organs of Palestinians

Israeli military admits to organ harvesting

Published: 21 Dec 09 08:53 CET
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/23964/20091221/

Following diplomatic tensions over an August article published in Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet accusing the Israeli army of illegally harvesting the organs of Palestinians, Israel has admitted its forensic pathologists removed organs from dead bodies without consent from their families, reports the Associated Press.

* Swedish reporter meets hostile Israeli crowd (2 Nov 09)
* Organ theft article 'a perversion of journalistic standards' (26 Oct 09)
* Israel blasts Sweden over organ harvesting report (21 Aug 09)

Over the weekend, a 2000 interview carried out by an American anthropology professor with Dr. Jehuda Hiss, the then head of Israel's Abu Kabir forensic institute, was broadcast on Israel's Channel 2 TV.

In the interview, Hiss admitted to harvesting corneas and that "no permission was asked from the family."

The Israeli military confirmed that skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers had been harvested at Abu Kabir throughout the 1990s, AP reports.

Hiss said that the practice ended in 2000.

"This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer," the Israeli Defence Forces said in a statement quoted by Channel 2.

Aftonbladet's article, 'Våra söner plundras på sina organ' ('They plunder the organs of our sons'), sparked a months-long diplomatic row between Israel and Sweden, with repeated calls from Israel for official condemnation of the article by the Swedish government.

Published in August, the Aftonbladet article by photographer and writer Donald Boström claimed the Israeli army had been involved in the illegal human organ trade. Boström linked allegations of organ harvesting made by individual Palestinians to a New York-based crime suspect, Rabbi Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who had been accused of attempting to facilitate the sale of a kidney from a donor in Israel.

The organs were harvested from individuals who died from various causes, but AP reported that there has been no evidence to back up Aftonbladet's claim that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians for their organs.

Charlotte West (news@thelocal.se/08 656 6518)

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Permalink Reply by truth on December 21, 2009 at 4:55pm

Israel has admitted that in the 1990s, its forensic pathologists harvested organs from dead bodies, including Palestinians, without permission of their families.

The issue emerged with publication of an interview with the then-head of Israel's Abu Kabir forensic institute, Dr. Jehuda Hiss. The interview was conducted in 2000 by an American academic, who released it because of a huge controversy last summer over an allegation by a Swedish newspaper that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to harvest their organs. Israel hotly denied the charge.

Parts of the interview were broadcast on Israel's Channel 2 TV over the weekend. In it, Hiss said, "We started to harvest corneas ... Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family."

The Channel 2 report said that in the 1990s, forensic specialists at Abu Kabir harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians and foreign workers, often without permission from relatives.

In a response to the TV report, the Israeli military confirmed that the practice took place. "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer," the military said in a statement quoted by Channel 2.

In the interview, Hiss described how his doctors would mask the removal of corneas from bodies. "We'd glue the eyelid shut," he said. "We wouldn't take corneas from families we knew would open the eyelids." http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=9385479

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